Video: quitter party interim leader doesn’t know its name

Heidi Allen is interim leader of Change UK – or something

Allen hears from Channel 4 what her new ‘party’ is now called

As the SKWAWKBOX covered earlier today, the ‘quitter group’ of MPs has applied to be a political party in spite of an absence of policies or ideas – and of competence. No sooner had it announced it was to be called the Change UK party than campaign and petition site Change UK was consulting its lawyers about the quitters appropriating its trade name.

But it seems the quitters’ organisational and communication skills are as poor as their name-choosing (and not-being-racist) skills.

Former Tory Heidi Allen is the interim leader of the new almost-party – but when she was congratulated by Channel 4 News’ Krishnan Guru-Murthy tonight, she was surprised to find out it had a name. It had to be seen to be believed:

Perhaps Ms Allen was just tired, but it genuinely seemed nobody from her ‘party’ – or more likely a highly-paid consultant or marketing agency acting on their behalf – had bothered telling the ‘chief tigger’ what had already been announced to the world hours earlier.

And she hadn’t bothered finding out.

SKWAWKBOX comment:

Breweries and knees-ups come to mind yet again. So far, everything the quitters’ group has touched, from their launch to their latest branding exercise, has turned to – well, dung.

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Chuka Umunna ‘acting principal spokesman’, Heidi Allen ‘interim leader’… apparently they believe the choice of leader should be left to The Membership at Conference in September – unfortunately Ms Allen thinks she might have binned the fag packet with his phone number on it.

Oh dear… What stand out to me is her choice of words. She’s the “leader” of a small group and said “is that how *they* call it now”. Not “is that what *we* are called now”… Many things can explain this, from the trivial as she’s not much involved and can’t be arsed and hasn’t taken ownership of the group (which is bad enough), to the most sordid revealing that the MPs are not the ones pulling the strings but some shadowy group.